CC reader posted this Ambassador sedan at the Cohort, and its long, blue nose just couldn’t be ignored. We’ve covered these before (links below), but there’s more than enough Amby nose-love hereabouts to go around one more time.
The Ambassador was given a push upmarket in 1969, with a lengthened wheelbase (122″), which did nothing for the interior dimensions, but pushed the nose out further, as was the common practice in the 30’s and 40s. Only 75,000 people were fooled, and bought one.
The rear end was given a somewhat vaguely ’63-’65 Riviera look, with the original tail light locations blanked out and the lights moved in between them.
Dick Teague had his stylists design a splendid little sculpture to crown those tail light caps. Very elegant, all in all.
Of course AMC’s rhinoplasty division was just getting warmed up for the grand finale that came a couple of years later, but at the time, I thought this move to give some gravitas to the poor old Ambassador by adding a lot of dead air space in front of the engine was pretty absurd. But who was asking me?
More Ambassador love:
1969 Ambassador: Not-So-Bravely Stretching Forward PN
1968 Ambassador: When borrowing Is A Deadly Sin: Greg Beckenbaugh
I used to see some AMC Ambassadors like this when I was a little boy. At the time, I found the Rebel/Matador more attractive than the Ambassador. But today, I find the Ambassador quite handsome.
I found the Rebel/Matador more attractive than the Ambassador. But today, I find the Ambassador quite handsome.
The Rebel and Matador has pretty downmarket interiors. The Amby got fake woodgrain. If you take a good side view of a Rebel, the front end does look a little bit too short (4″ shorter than a Matador, 10″ shorter than a 69+ Ambassador)
I had an ex-cop ’73 Ambassador. Vinyl covered bench seats with rubber mats on the floor is pretty far down market 🙂 It did have a 401 however, which made up for everything.
I also had a ’68 Rebel SST, which had a very nice interior. It was 290 equipped and pretty much a slug.
Oh yeah, the 401 did eventually find it’s way into the Rebel!
Wow, I’ve never seen the rear end of one of these before. It’s certainly interesting. Good old AMC, always giving us something interesting to comment on.
I love Dick Teague but he must have been messing with people with some of these designs, right? Have any of the AMC stylists working with him ever written a book? There’s got to be a lot of funny stories out there…
Nelson, that makes two of us – I don’t think I’ve ever even seen a picture of the rear of one of these. Either that, or it didn’t register.
I actually really like this, even if I’m not crazy about the color of its paint.
Last weekend I was watching a 3 part episode of the Mission: Impossible tv series where the “bad guy”, a general who was angling to become the ruler of his country, had an stretched wheelbase Ambassador SST as his personal limousine. His was a very attractive black with a black vinyl roof car.
I would say these Ambassadors were able to hold their own, stylistically, with a 4 door Ford Galaxie 500/LTD and a Chevy Impala/Caprice. HOWEVER, I hold a special fondness for the 69 Plymouth Fury, and would take the Fury over the other 3 I mentioned.
“stretched wheelbase Ambassador SST”
Kinda like this one?
Watched that as well, this weekend- found it an attractive car. Wondered if they chose an Ambassador where it just wasn’t as common.
I noticed the Ambassador limo in that episode when when it was first broadcast back when the earth was young…I had an advantage that I was growing up around AMC products….Studebaker having gone toes up on my parents.
On occasion I’ve been thumbing through various car sales sights, specifically looking for AMC Matadors and Ambassadors.
They are mighty thin on actually finding any and in my imaginary garage I’d have one, but I’m not so sure about this one – the rear end isn’t horrible, but it leaves me a bit cool. Otherwise, I rather like the stretched thing.
The taillight blanks make it look as if the car was widened instead and the taillights of a slimmer model used. Very odd. The “crests” need to be bigger and more substantial so that it looks like less of a void. Kind of like a butt end interpretation of padded headlight doors.
Agreed. The crests were wide enough, they just needed to be taller and longer. It would have helped the rear appearance immensely.
In fact, one has to wonder, was this an example of AMC cost-cutting, i.e., someone in finance decided on a ‘one-size-fits-all’ crest for the new, longer Ambassador, rather than designing a crest specifically sized to fill in the gap between the taillights / rear deck molding? If so, it’s rather extreme. Even GM didn’t scrimp when it came to designing emblems that at least fit where they went.
OTOH, AMC certainly had a history of incongruous styling touches (another example would be stuff like the out-of-place, cursive font used for the ‘SST’ model emblems), so it was probably just another, typical AMC design faux-pas.
I thought, at the time, that AMC was really starting to look good thanks to Teague’s styling. Sadly, they fell from grace just a few years later because of the new safety and pollution rules.
Still, 69 AMX was a beautiful car,
This one reminds me of the ’72 Ambassador that Dad bought brand-new (from Wiggins AMC in Lima, OH). It was a somewhat darker shade of blue.
He traded a ’67 Fleetwood for it because the Caddy was nickel-and-diming him to death.
He never liked the Ambassador that much, either. In ’73 he traded it toward a brand-new Mercury Monterey ordered just the way he wanted it (I bet it was the only new one the dealership sold WITHOUT full wheel covers – center caps only).
I guess when you’re the last independent, clinging to life by a thread (did anyone really think AMC was going to survive any seventies’ economic downturn), your only styling recourse for some lines is to just stretch or shorten, i.e., Javelin/AMX, Ambassador, and Hornet/Gremlin, then hope for the best.
Considering some of the expensive blunders (Pacer, Matador coupe), AMC did remarkably well and hung in there a whole lot longer than I suspect many thought they would.
OTOH, while not wild successes, they did have some otherwise solid offerings, too, like the Hornet Sportabout, Jeep Wagoneer and Cherokee.
From 1957 on Ambassadors were just a Classic or equivalent with extra length from the firewall front. Except in 62-64 when they were the same. AMC was very adept at slicing and dicing the same body from ’63 on just like Ford did with the Falcon.
If AMC’s rhinoplasty division was responsible for the later Ambassador’s front protrusion (though i would argue the final Javelin shape was even worse), which division was responsible for the Gremlin’s tall-end tuck?
Cool find, I always liked that grille on the wagons.
I find the front more successful than the rear treatment.
Love those door handles though, I got about 22 years experience opening those. 🙂
I always liked the 1971-73 Matadors….From 1974 on, they just looked odd with the front end snout added on…..I cannot believe that AMC could not find a more aesthetically pleasing way to incorporate the new bumper regulations onto the Matador.
I cannot believe that AMC could not find a more aesthetically pleasing way to incorporate the new bumper regulations onto the Matador.
Some of the surviving AMC styling guys show up at the local AMC meet in Livonia each year. Last year, I had a chance to talk with Vince Geraci and asked him about the 74 nose job both the Ambassador and Matador received. Vince was the head of interiors in the mid 70s, so did not really know. He suggested I e-mail Pat Foster and drop his name, with the question.
Foster wrote back that the 74 nose were not for bumper or crash standards, but simply to make the cars look longer.
The ‘Jimmy Durante’ nose job looked worse on the Matador than the Ambassador. You really have to wonder why AMC would spend money on something that actually made the cars look worse. I guess management decided that gambling the company’s scarce tooling dollars on the Matador Coupe and the Pacer was a better idea than upgrading their core products. Oops.
X2. Whoever put that beak on the Ambassador and the Matador must have been on some kind of hallucinogenic. Even the worst Soviet cars never looked so hideous. I can think of a number of other ways in which the basic (actually quite elegant) styling could have been improved.
Beaks were “in” when the 74 AMCs were being designed.
If you question Dick Teague’s choices for 74, you have to question Bunkie Knudsen’s choices for 70.
Bunkie left a beak tradition behind at Pontiac.
oooohh…gunsight beak.
.. and to me, they are just as hideous, so yes. He was influenced by them for sure but I cannot understand how someone with his talent could.
.. and to me, they are just as hideous, so yes. He was influenced by them for sure but I cannot understand how someone with his talent could.
We old buggers remember when opera windows swept the US industry. AMC reworked the Matador coupe to give it the sought after opera window look. Even Checker put oval opera windows on the Marathon.
We saw what happened when Teague went off in an entirely different direction with the Pacer.
Steve, this is a completely different discussion but I actually never found the Pacer in its original form ugly. Different for sure. And in my view, neither its (or the Gremlin’s) downfall had anything to do with the styling but with AMC’s inability to offer a fuel efficient engine (the Audi 4 cyl. was a dog – am familiar with them from here in Austria, it’s really a truck engine, as coarse as a Jeep 4, and not very good on fuel economy and in any case was offered 3 years too late) in cars which screamed “economy” – particularly when a car like that, capable of returning 30-35 MPG, would have sold like hot cakes…
And a Matador coupe can look cool once you ditch the Federal bumpers lower it and fit the right wheel/tire combo.
But the only thing you can do with the schnozzle cars is fit earlier panels, sorry…
The funny thing on these is that if you look under the hood you’ll see the dead space is not in front of the engine, it’s in back of it. There’s a big gap between the engine and the firewall. The engine remained perched on the front crossmember that also carries the lower control arms – so when the front wheels were pushed forward the engine went with them.
Unlike today, when engine rooms are absurdly crowded, there was plenty of room in the late 60s as long hood were “in”. I remember reading a road test of a 69 Gran Prix and the writer commenting there was enough room in there for two engines. Look at the length of the fan shroud on this thing, and the dead space in front of the radiator.
Should have used a straight eight!
I saw a Cadillac Eldorado-based limousine with a full-size bbq grill installed in front of the radiator! Mind you it had two front axles
I saw that one as well as Shannons a few years ago.
as of a few years ago a friend of my dad’s still had the 69/70 ambassador sedan he had bought as his very first new car.
the story as I remember it is he went to trade it in on a new buick in the mid to late 70’s and whatever offer he got was so insulting the car was put in the back of his shop and has never seen the road since. it was green(weren’t they all?) and in remarkably good shape.
I was one of the many who tried to buy it and got a flat no. it would appear every couple summers outside, be thoroughly cleaned and I guess serviced, then disappear back into hiding again.
I know his shop burned down a few years ago, and although I hadn’t thought of the car in a long time, this post has made me think I should check into it next time I am out that way.
it would be a shame if it went up in flames. I hope it was on one of its summer “breaks” and is still waiting for its return to the road as the longest parked ambassador in history
“The rear end was given a somewhat vaguely ’63-’65 Riviera look, with the original tail light locations blanked out and the lights moved in between them.”
Editor, I owned a 1965 Buick Riviera. I knew the Buick Riviera. The Buick Riviera was a beloved car of mine. Editor, that car is no Buick Riviera. *
*With apologies to the late Senator Bentsen.
This reminds me of my first visit to Kenosha in the summer of 1987. They had just started building M-bodies at the old Nash plant on the lake, but the town was like an AMC time warp. Lots of these around.
Even though it was a mid-sized car, and everything behind the firewall was pretty much the same as with the Classics and Rebels, the Ambassador was supposed to compete with full-sized Chevys, Fords and Plymouths and didn’t do a terrible job. It wasn’t quite as roomy, though.
I remember AMC advertising how the Ambassador had more headroom than a number of other cars, including the Rebel. It was true. The seat cushions in the Ambassador were lower. Also, being one of the first lower-priced cars to feature air-conditioning as standard equipment was clever marketing, but it wasn’t as good as the air-conditioning in a GM car.
A closer look at the numbers reveals that the Ambassador struggled with its mission. With around 75,000 sales in 1969, the Ambassador enjoyed its last year of sales gains over the prior year. Cever marketing regarding the car’s value proposition was probably key.
The ’69 full-size Chevy outsold the entire 1969 Ambassador production every 23 days. It took Ford about 27 days to do that. Plymouth managed it every 75 days or so.
That rear treatment always mystified me. That back end just begged for wall-to-wall taillights that were so in vogue then.
Patience Grasshopper. They only had budget to do one end of the car at a time. This is a 70.
In 1970, they not only got a new rear end, they got a Wells Rich Greene commerical featuring a young Robert DiNiro:
How awful is that commercial?
One of my favorite car commercials! I still use those two great line by Joey’s mother on anyone who buys a new car, always with the hand gestures:
“Joey! You need such an expensive car?!?!
“Joey, So fancy!
Still never fails to make me laugh!
If this is the Ambassador that’s usually parked near 102nd Ave in North Portland, I’ve driven by it 2-3 times a week for the last year. Seems to be in great shape, and it moves around from parking spot to parking spot, so it does run!
I can’t decide if I really like the styling here or not. Sometimes it’s appealing, sometimes it’s just odd.
The taillight treatment in particular is certainly unusual, but that would get pleasantly resolved for ’70.
Being near AMC Capital, Kenosha WI, more than a few of these were on Chciago streets. These rears look like they ran out of trim and stuck the little crests on the ends. Looked much better 70-73.
And I agree that the 74’s were mimicking the ‘Bunkie Beaks’, to look bigger, but by the first Gas Crunch, AMC was known for Gremlins and Hornets. Those that still wanted bigger cars went to GM and Ford. Even Mopar was starting to lose bigger car market, not counting Cordoba.
Aside from the taillamps I think it’s an attractive car. Dick Teague and crew did a great job, given limited resources.
About that Smurf-Blue color though, that’s horrendous. A neighbor’s daily driver is a 1970 Chevy Impala 2 door in a similar bright blue with black vinyl top…I followed him for about 3 miles today on my way to work, and damn near died from the unburned hydrocarbons spewing from his exhaust…yuck. I picture greenish gold or really pale blue paint on cars like this, not BRIGHT blue.
I like these quite a bit.
60s Rambler/AMCs were mostly respectable looking cars, but really carried nothing distinctive about them and blended in very well with the big three.
At least in the 70s, my favorite AMC decade, for better or for worse, AMCs stood out; 74-78 Matador Coupe and sedan, Pacer, Gremlin, Hornet, and even Ambassador. None of these could be confused for anything else from the big 3.
Now maybe that’s good or bad for sales at the time, but as classic cars, I’d argue it definitely adds to my AMC interest.
Longer front ends with larger engines and upgraded trim to create their top-line series had served both Nash and Hudson well from the mid’30’s through the formation of American Motors. When AMC finances forced rationalization for 1958, there still were legions of loyal Nash and Hudson customers who willingly bought into that formula. In fact, they were still a factor in the sales volume of these last Ambassadors from 1965-74. By the end, their generation was fading, so did too their favored car configuration.
Back in the early ’70s, the parents of my best friend in high-school got one of these in metallic dark-green. We all went in it on many weekend trips out to their Maryland Eastern-Shore farm. Solid, nice looking car, though the interior trim wasn’t well fastened, and it had those weird ‘where are the tail-lights?’ rear fenders. I think ’69 was AMC’s last year without a steering-lock. In later years, it developed a ‘dieseling’ problem during shut-off.
After my friend got his license, I remember him turning off the key one day, shifting it into ‘drive’, then driving it across a parking-lot as a diesel!
The ‘missing-tail-lights’ got ‘fixed’ in 1970, and I really liked the looks of the big AMC four-doors, up until they tacked on that ridiculous ‘snout’ in 1974.
Happy Motoring, Mark